


Reading Between the Lines

by tptigger



Category: The Tomorrow People (1973)
Genre: Gen, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 04:09:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2837504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tptigger/pseuds/tptigger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth realizes that Hsui Tai needs a helping hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reading Between the Lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [everchangingmuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/everchangingmuse/gifts).



> Many thanks to ladyslvr for the beta and pushing me to make this the best I could.

Elizabeth turned the pages of her book, enjoying the relative peace of her cabin in the lab. It seemed a little silly to her, the way John had set things up with her and Hsui Tai's cabins in a separate wing of the lab than the boys' quarters. It did, however, spare her from Mike's loud music and Andrew's spirited games of... she wasn't sure what in the hallways.

It also meant that Mike and John were more likely to be the butt of Andrew's pranks than she or Hsui Tai were.

For now, it was fine, great even. As they got older- well, Liz supposed they would move out when or if they ever got married. It would have to be when, wouldn't it? How else could they make sure there were new generations of Tomorrow People?

Though how they were supposed to find time with that when it seemed that there was a new alien invasion every other week was beyond her.

There was a crash, and then a string of vitriolic words that Elizabeth assumed were very rude in Tibetan from next door.

Perhaps the girls' side of the dormitories, though less occupied, were no less prone to noise. As suddenly as Hsui Tai had started cursing, the loud string of vehement exclamations stopped. Then a quieter noise. Was that sobbing?

Liz frowned, placing a bookmark in her book and closing it gently, then exiting her own cabin and knocking on the door next to her own. "Hsui Tai?"

The young girl opened the door, fiercely wiping stray tears from her eyes. A copy of the Heinlein book that Andrew had handed her earlier that day lay on the tan shag carpet, half the pages folded and squashed under the book cover. Liz guessed that she had found the source crashing sound.

"I didn't think Andrew would've been reading some of Heinlein's crazier work," she joked lightly.

Hsui Tai shook her head. "I can't figure it out. The words are hard to understand."

"Heinlein can be a little obtuse," Elizabeth said. "Would you like to borrow a dictionary?"

Hsui Tai reached for her bookshelf and pulled a copy of _Oxford English Dictionary_ from between a copy of _The Hobbit_ and _Tiger, Tiger_. "I cannot use it. It is hard to understand."

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. "What language did they teach you to read in at the monastery?"

Hsui Tai laughed darkly. "Why would anyone teach a god how to read?"

Elizabeth blinked. John hadn't said anything to her about this.

"Please don't tell Mike, he already thinks I'm dumb."

"You're not dumb, Hsui Tai," Elizabeth said. "You can't expect yourself to just know things that you were never taught."

"John gave me these," Hsui Tai said. She opened a drawer and pulled out a stack of square books and red tapes. "After I listened to the tapes a couple of times, I can read those, but anything else..."

Elizabeth took the top book from the stack, which had drawings from Disney's _Snow White and the Seven Dwarves_. She opened it to a page, pointing to a word in the middle. "What does this one say?"

Hsui Tai muttered for a minute. "The."

"Can you find another the in this book?" Elizabeth grabbed the copy of _The Hobbit_ , not bothering to open it.

Hsui Tai took the book, stuck her thumb in the middle and opened it. Then frowned.

Elizabeth took the book and glanced at it. Yes, "the" appeared on the open pages. "You didn't learn to read them, Hsui Tai. You memorized them."

Hsui Tai sighed. "I tried."

"I'm sure you did." Elizabeth looked around the room, besides the Heinlein and Tolkien, she found a couple of classic Asimov books, Bester, and McCaffery. "It doesn't help that everything here is well above your reading level." Elizabeth wasn't sure she knew what Hsui Tai's reading level was, but these were all books that were for someone fairly proficient at reading. "Get your things, we'll have to go to the book store."

Hsui Tai raised her eyebrows.

"I'm a teacher, do you really think I'm going to stand here and let you not know how to read?"

Hsui Tai smiled shyly. "Can we not tell John? I do not wish to insult him."

"It can be our secret if you want, but John won't be insulted. It would be good to remind him that not everyone learns the same way he does. What if we run into someone else and I'm back on the Trig and he tries the same thing? He can't learn from his mistakes if he doesn't know that he's made them."

Hsui Tai nodded.

"Is it John or Mike you're worried about?"

"I do not wish either of them to know," Hsui Tai said. "I..." she sighed and muttered something in a language that Elizabeth didn't understand.

"May I?" Elizabeth asked, gently, reaching out with her mind.

Hsui Tai nodded, lowering her barriers as Liz touched her mind.

Elizabeth could see how Hsui Tai had trouble finding words in English- she could barely articulate it in her native tongue. Mostly, it was that Hsui Tai felt as though she were a weak link, not as worthy of the powers she'd been born with as the others. On one of their many conversations while she was still at the Trig, John had told Elizabeth that he was surprised at how well Hsui Tai was coping with no longer being a god.

The truth was, Hsui Tai was treating John and Mike as she had often treated the monks at the monastery-- or perhaps Elizabeth should encourage Hsui Tai to refer to them as her captors-- she knew it was unwise to give them any emotions or behaviors outside of what they were expecting, lest things not go as she wished.

Elizabeth sighed. "Hsui Tai, we can't help you if we don't know what's wrong. You're safe here, with us. Lord knows, if we were going to do something horrible to anyone who screwed up, Mike would be long gone."

"Screwed up?" Hsui Tai asked.

"Made a mistake," Elizabeth said.

"I do not understand."

"It's idiomatic," Elizabeth said. "I'm having a long talk with John when we get back from the bookstore. You need to be watching television."

"John says television is a bad way to learn about the world, and Mr. Forbes says it is the devil's box."

"John is right, but it will be a good introduction to idiomatic language," Elizabeth said, quietly thinking that it would also be a good way for Hsui Tai to practice critical thinking skills. "As for Andrew's father, well, he did think Andrew's powers were from the devil at first."

"Yes, he did," Hsui Tai said.

"So, shall we go to the bookstore?" Elizabeth asked.

Hsui Tai nodded. "I will get my things."

* * *

When they got back from the bookstore, with two primers and several easier books in hand, Elizabeth suggested that Hsui Tai have a rest before they got into lessons the next day. Hsui Tai had bowed gratefully, then retreated to her cabin.

Elizabeth knocked on the door to John's workshop.

"Come in."

Elizabeth entered the room off of the main lab to find John seated at his workbench. The bunsen burner was put away today, the bench instead full of a soldering iron, electronic parts, resistors, and a few things that Elizabeth suspected were from the Trig and not the local hardware store.

"You can help if you promise not to burn yourself on the soldering iron again," John said absently.

"Really, John, that was years ago," Elizabeth said, with more than a little exasperation.

John jumped. "Oh, I'm sorry, Elizabeth. I thought you were Andrew wanting to help out again."

"That was three weeks ago and you need to drop it," Elizabeth said.

"Probably," John said, putting down the screwdriver that he'd been using. "To what do I owe the pleasure? Is Mike causing trouble again?"

"Actually, I wanted to talk about Hsui Tai."

John turned to Elizabeth, crossing his arms. "I can't see her causing trouble."

"No, but she's having trouble. I caught her throwing that Heinlein book that Andrew gave her across the room in frustration."

"Well, he has been writing some pretty strange stuff of late," John pointed out. "Well, since the sixties even."

"No, it's not that. She was having trouble reading it," Elizabeth said.

John squinted, giving Elizabeth a strange look.

"Not everyone can learn to read by following along to children's storybook tapes, John," Elizabeth said. "Especially if no one's even taught them the letters and they barely speak English."

"Why didn't she tell me that the story tapes weren't helping?" John dug though his tool box, picking up several spools of wire before he found the correct one. "I'd have had TIM read to her."

"You're an idiot."

"Elizabeth?"

"John, you've been living with Hsui Tai a lot longer than I have, how have you not realized how timid she is? She was afraid of insulting you, and she's gotten very used to hiding anything resembling unexpected behavior from authority figures."

John raised a quizzical eyebrow. "She told you."

"You're not the most approachable person in the world."

"You've never had a problem telling me that I'm being an idiot."

Elizabeth snorted. "That's me, not Hsui Tai. I was raised to speak my mind to all comers; despite being told she was a goddess, Hsui Tai was taught to listen to the monks at the monastery. Oh, and you did notice that the monks are all men, right? The only other females she interacted with were other goddesses- other young women. She sees me as a peer.

"Mike is another story; they're about the same age, but Hsui Tai didn't go to him because she wants to impress him--I suspect that crush goes both ways by the way. You, however, are a grown man, and the only grown men she's interacted with before were the monks. I think she's afraid that if she does something you don't like, then you're going to turn her out on the street. That is pretty much what happened to her in the monastery, after all."

"I thought she was well aware they wanted her to stay," John said. "Mike and I insisted that she come with us, that we could train her better with regard to her powers."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "John, I could have sworn I spent the last few minutes telling you that she's too timid to explain when she doesn't understand things-- it was too dangerous for her before. The very first thing we need to teach her, John, is that she needs to ask questions and stop us if she doesn't understand something. I had to turn my Teacher Dook-- as Tyso so tactfully likes to refer to it-- up to one hundred percent in order to detect when she wasn't understanding my questions in the store. She just kept nodding when she didn't. I would've bought the completely wrong materials if I hadn't impressed upon her that it was critical that she tell me what she did and didn't understand."

John frowned. "You're right, that's a problem. Where do we start?"

"For starters, you need to lift the TV ban," Elizabeth said. "She'll get a much faster grasp of idiomatic language if she's exposed to more of it, and often in TV there's enough non-verbal cues for her to catch on much more easily."

John frowned. "I'm not sure that exposing her to Doctor Who or the like is the world's best idea."

"Doctor Who would be perfect," Elizabeth said. "It's not like you can't tell right away what is and is not real. And they do speak the Queen's English, more or less."

"Quite."

"Fewer arguments with Mike," Elizabeth pointed out. "And it's a cultural thing. She's not going to catch on to British culture if she's never exposed to any of it."

"There are plenty of books..."

"John, she's not even reading at a first grade level and she's having trouble fitting in."

John sighed. "Very well, Elizabeth. I don't see why I bother arguing with you sometimes."

"Neither do I."

* * *

The secrecy promise only lasted a couple weeks. Andrew jaunted in directly after school when Hsui Tai and Elizabeth were working on her reading.

Andrew's jaw had dropped, taking in the scene of the two nearly grown women with a thin children's book between them, Hsui Tai's finger resting on the words to keep her place. He blushed. "I gave you too hard a book, didn't I?"

"Andrew, it is all right," Hsui Tai said. "I..."

Elizabeth cleared her throat.

"It was very thoughtful, and I am sure I will enjoy it when I can read it," Hsui Tai said.

Andrew looked at the book between them, eyes wide with mischief.

"Andrew..." Elizabeth said.

Andrew just grinned. "I'll be right back." He bounded up to the jaunting pad and disappeared.

"Where's he gone, TIM?" Elizabeth asked.

"Back to his home," TIM replied. "I suspect that Hsui Tai is about to be the recipient of some, shall we say hand-me-downs?"

"Some what?" Hsui Tai asked.

"In families with multiple children, sometimes things get outgrown before they wear out," Elizabeth explained, "so they get given to the younger children, handed down, hand me downs, see?"

"Oh, yes," Hsui Tai said. "Except I am older than Andrew. So would they not be hand-me-ups?"

"Hence TIM's rather circuitous language," Elizabeth said.

"Circuitous?" Hsui Tai asked, carefully sounding out the syllables.

"In a circle or like a circuit," Elizabeth said, "he was going about it in a roundabout way."

"I see."

Andrew appeared on the jaunting pad with a large cardboard box in his hands. "These are some of my favorite books from when I was younger." He pulled out a stack, a few were thin picture books, large, and others were clearly thinner than an average novel, but thick enough to contain chapters and more words. "Kind of all levels. Dad and I put them away for if I ever have kids, so please take care of them, but I thought they'd be good for you to read, yeah?"

Hsui Tai hugged him. "Thank you, Andrew."

"I want to read this one with you when you're ready," Andrew said, pulling out one of the picture books. "I think you'd really like it."

"How about now?" Hsui Tai asked, gesturing towards the couch.

Andrew grinned, hopping onto the couch. Hsui Tai settled next to him and opened the book.

Elizabeth grinned, shutting the other book and standing up to stretch.

John poked his head out of the workshop and raised an eyebrow at Elizabeth. She winked at him. He slipped over.

"I guess we were due for a nicer one," John whispered.

Elizabeth elbowed him. "Mike wasn't that bad."

"He has his moments," John said, "but not like this."

"I think you're selling him short, but... well, yeah," Elizabeth said, looking and Hsui Tai and Andrew, their heads intently bent over the book as Hsui Tai sounded the words out.

**Author's Note:**

> I got "dook" as the Romani word for magic from Google. (No, Tyso doesn't know about ferrets.) My apologies if that was incorrect.


End file.
